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Medical oncology

Patients with brain metastases in early-phase trials

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A recent publication presented objective evidence that patients with and without brain metastases perform similarly in phase I clinical trials for advanced-stage cancer. This finding supports what neurosurgeons and neuro-oncologists have long suspected; namely, that the presence of brain metastases need not mandate exclusion of patients from early-phase clinical trials.

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Figure 1: Enrollment of patients with BM in phase I clinical trials for lung cancer.

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Acknowledgements

This article was supported in part by Grant W81XWH-062-0033 from the US Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to R. J. Weil. We wish to thank the Melvin Burkhardt Chair in Neurosurgical Oncology and the Karen Colina Wilson research endowment within the Burkhardt Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation for additional support and funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, The Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute, The Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, 44195, OH, USA

    Nicholas F. Marko

  2. Burkhardt Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center, The Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute, The Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, 44195, OH, USA

    Robert J. Weil

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  1. Nicholas F. Marko
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Correspondence to Robert J. Weil.

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Marko, N., Weil, R. Patients with brain metastases in early-phase trials. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 8, 390–391 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2011.73

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